@ping2pong: "Monday, November 10, 2003
NEW YORK  - At dawn, armed FBI (search) agents assigned to an anti-terrorism
unit converged on an unlikely front in the war on terrorism: a tiny ice
cream shop in Brooklyn (search).
The agents arrested the Yemeni proprietor, a naturalized U.S. citizen, who
lived three floors above. Based on a tip, they said, they had learned that
$20 million had passed through the bank accounts of his business from 1997
until the raid in January.
The proprietor, Abad Elfgeeh, pleaded guilty last month in a proceeding that
escaped notice, perhaps because the illegal money-transfer charge against
him never mentioned terrorism.
But a review of court files by The Associated Press revealed that
prosecutors believe Elfgeeh was an associate of Sheik Mohammed Hasa
Al-Moayad, a prominent Yemeni cleric charged with funneling millions to Al
Qaeda in the years before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Elfgeeh has denied any connection. Al-Moayad is being held in Germany, where
he is fighting extradition to the United States.
The allegations of an illicit connection between the two men stem from the
federal government's crackdown on informal money transfer networks known as
"hawalas." (search)
But since the Sept. 11 attacks, authorities have worked to dismantle the
system, fearing it allows terrorists to raise and launder money. Usama bin
Laden has boasted that hawalas created cracks in the Western financial
system that "were as familiar to him and his Al Qaeda colleagues as the
lines of their own hands," a recent congressional report warned.
Offices of companies providing hawala services have been shuttered in cities
around the United States. In Brooklyn alone, more than a dozen Arab or
Muslim men have been charged with transferring money without a license. One,
an American of Egyptian descent, was convicted in July of trying to smuggle
$659,000 in boxes of Ritz crackers, Quaker Oats and baby wipes stuffed in a
suitcase on a flight to Egypt.
Defense lawyers call the crackdown overkill and say prosecutors have
unfairly linked their clients to extremist causes and subjected them to
interrogations and severe jail conditions without actually charging them
with terrorism.
Some of the defendants were naturalized U.S. citizens with clean records.
Most were guilty only of trying to send money home to loved ones, said Peter
Mollo, an attorney for Mohamed Ali Alriany, a Brooklyn man who pleaded
guilty in a case in which investigators say he made millions of dollars in
unreported transfers to Yemen through his gift shop.
 "They're looking for a bigger fish," Mollo said. "There is no bigger fish."
On the surface, Elfgeeh seems an unlikely threat to national security. He
arrived in the United States 30 years ago with an eighth grade education and
became a citizen five years later. He was in the ice cream business for 20
years and had no previous arrests.
In his plea after the Jan. 18 raid on his ice cream shop, Elfgeeh, 48, said
he began informally transferring money for family and friends for a fee in
1995. He said he "intended to get a license, but never got around to it."
Testifying about the morning of his arrest, Elfgeeh told a judge that he was
asleep with his pregnant wife when the armed federal agents pounded on his
door. The agents, who had a material witness warrant, intimidated him into
consenting to a search, he said.
"I was terrified, very scared," he said. "Of course, we are hearing a lot
since Sept. 11 about what happened to Arabic men, what happened to Muslims
who look like me."
But authorities said documents seized in his shop revealed a pattern of
deception.
Tax records showed the shop had average annual revenue of about $185,000,
but court papers said that from November 2001 to November 2002 alone,
Elfgeeh's bank accounts had deposits of more than $5.3 million - money later
transferred to banks in Yemen and elsewhere.
Investigators say they connected Elfgeeh to the Yemeni cleric, Al-Moayad,
following a sting operation in Germany in which Al-Moayad told an FBI
informant that he supplied $20 million, recruits and weapons to bin Laden.
Al-Moayad allegedly named four men in New York - including Elfgeeh - he
claimed had secretly transferred funds to him in Yemen. He also "said he
received money for 'jihad' that was collected from the Al Farouq mosque in
Brooklyn," court papers said.
Past investigations identified the mosque as a place of worship for
terrorists, including the men who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993.
Mosque leaders have dismissed any current connection.
During a sealed proceeding in July, Elfgeeh testified he had heard of
Al-Moayad, but added: "I do not personally know him."
He is now awaiting sentencing on the illegal money-transfer charge and could
face up to 10 years in prison."
    @phaedrine_stonebridge: "<quote>
<brevity snip>
Oh yeah........... i just can't understand why anyone would be 
suspicious about $659,000 stuffed in Ritz Cracker boxes.  Can you?   
Those poor persecuted muslims.  Personally, i prefer Christmas cookie 
tins and salamis hollowed out with a grapefruit spoon.
."
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